Textbooks and Pancakes
by feedthecat
Summary: Jake, torn between staying in his dorm room where his roommate and his girlfriend were getting some action and sleeping on a bench in the pouring rain, picks neither one and takes cover in the student library instead, where he finds Amy pulling an all-nighter, studying for her Biology final. University AU.


**AN: HI! I'm back. I intended for this to be a short fic, but before I knew it, I had ended up with 5000 words and way too many emotions. Jake and Amy have this effect on me.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

Amy Santiago sat on her own in the middle of a dimly lit University library, propping her head up with her arm. It was 3AM, and there was a storm brewing outside. Every so often she would hear a clasp of thunder, knocking her right off her feet just when she was about to drift to sleep, reminding her that her purpose here was to study.

It was ridiculous of her to still be up at such an hour, but it was finals week and she didn't have her own copy of the Biology textbook. The only other copy was this one in the library; it was one not to be written on, not to be highlighted, and most importantly, not to be taken away.

Truth to be told, she didn't have any business applying for Biology. She didn't hate it, but it wasn't like she was going to be a scientist. She had only taken this course because she wasn't interested in any of the other Sciences, and she had to fill her credits. The hours were good enough – the lectures and labs were all in the morning, which meant she almost always had her afternoons off. She liked to start her mornings right, with people and learning and cups of coffee, and she liked to run errands in the afternoon when the shops were actually open, and the people less cranky.

Amy dog-eared the page mindlessly, taking out her pen. She poised it above the rows and rows of words and the detailed diagrams she already knew she would never manage to remember, and just before she set it down, stopped herself. _This wasn't her book._ She sat up straight, tucking a strand of hair that was falling in front of her face, and moved her shoulders, which had gone stiff. She flicked through the rest of the book. She still had another four chapters to go, and at this rate she was going, she probably would not be leaving the library anytime before the sun rises. _Great_.

Her mother would tell her off if she ever found out she had pulled _yet_ another all-nighter in the library, surrounded by nothing but the musty smell of old books.

"You need to go out more," her mother had told her over the phone just a week ago. "Meet people. Build connections. You're at University, for heaven's sake."

"Well, I do need to study," she responded, immediately feeling defensive about her lifestyle. "And my finals are coming up, so now is the time to channel all my energy into passing my classes. And not get drunk and end up throwing up all over some stranger's couch."

"I'm not telling you not to study," her mother said, ignoring the last part. "But that's what you've been doing the entire year. I just worry that you're missing out on all these _experiences_ … when will you ever phone home to talk about a boy instead of books?"

"I don't have time for boys," she said abruptly, and then wondered if she had just sounded a bit too harsh. She imagined her mother frowning, twirling the cord of the landline impatiently, and felt bad. "I mean, I will come to that _eventually_ … I'm just… maybe I'm just a late-bloomer."

"Maybe," her mother said, her tone clouded with uncertainty. "Though I suppose you could always go out and meet people. No harm in that," she added hopefully.

Amy groaned.

"Well, take your time. You know I don't mind. I like that you have a mind of your own."

This was an outright lie. Her mother had married her father when she was twenty-three and him twenty-six, and since then, she had popped out baby after baby. Amy didn't disapprove of the choices her mother made, but sometimes she felt pressured into making the same choices, which bothered her. All along, she had just wanted to be on her own path. Some time in high school, she had learned that just because she had been spawned from her mother's uterus did not mean that she had to follow suit and be just like her. She didn't want to follow anyone's footsteps; she was determined to make her own imprints.

Amy let the hypocritical comment slide, and clicked her tongue, wondering if she should just listen to her mother's advice and at least try to be interested in going to parties. Maybe she could run along to one, and leave if she really hated it. That was always an option.

She had been so deep into her thoughts that she had zoned out, and when she had snapped back into reality, her mother had moved on to another topic. _Thank God_ , she thought.

"And just buy that damn textbook, will you?" her mother said. "You shouldn't always be cooped up in that library. I hate to be saying this so often, but honestly, if you would just _listen_ to me, I wouldn't have to repeat myself another time."

"It's too expensive," Amy argued, knowing she was right. "I'm not spending a hundred dollars on a book that talks about cells if I'm not going to be taking this class next year. I know it covers everything I need to learn, but I just can't afford it right now."

"You know that your father and I can always pay for it. And if you feel so bad, you can always just return the money when you get a job, just like what Jeff and Max are planning to do. And they are doing just fine, if you ask me."

Jeff and Max were two of her seven brothers, and they were currently in their third and last years of University respectively. They had kept a strict record of the amount of money they had been borrowing from their parents since their first day on campus, and now that they were close to graduating, they were starting to panic.

Amy had seen what they had been spending their money on when she peeped at their lists – alcohol, pair after pair of running shoes that had the same functions, and an obscene amount of food. Even though she was good at managing her finances, she didn't want to be like them. She didn't like the idea of having additional burden. She was already using too much of her parents' money to pay for her tuition. As a result, she worked weekends at a nearby bookshop to help pay for stationery and other trivial expenses, but she almost never earned enough; she always ended up surrendering her birthday and Christmas money to even out the sum. She wasn't always happy about that, but at least she was independent, and she was proud of it.

"No, that'd be irresponsible," she said. "Actually, just… just drop it, mum. It's a textbook. I'm pretty sure they have copies of them in the library. They always do."

"But they almost always never let you take them away, and you already know how I feel about you spending so much time on your own-"

"I'll figure a way around it, I promise. Don't worry about me."

"Fine," her mother replied in a tone that suggested she was still concerned as ever, but was finally giving in. If that was what her daughter wanted, she couldn't do anything to stop her. "But make sure you go out there and have a social life at some point before the semester is over, okay?"

"Yeah, I will," she said. "I will, when I'm done with my finals." And she hung up, sick of the static between them, the never-ending white noise that always seemed to hinder their relationship's progress.

Amy eyed the rows of tall shelves that stood on her left, twirling her pen in her hand. She wondered how many people had hooked up right there, on the spot. Who was she kidding? This was college, so… tons. Probably hundreds.

She snapped out of her trance and directed her gaze at the textbook that had been lying in front of her. It was getting later by the minute, and she had been studying for so long that she could feel herself losing her grip on reality. Thirty minutes ago, she thought she had seen a ghost float by.

She shook her head to clear her thoughts.

 _No. Get it together, Amy. Stop drifting. You're here to study, and you're going to ace that final._

"Cell differentiation is the process in which the cells-" she mumbled as her fingers followed the words on the page, but was interrupted by a voice.

"Hey."

She looked up, and smiled weakly.

"Hi."

It was the tall and lanky guy from her Biology class. She didn't know his name, and she didn't know what he was doing here at 3AM when she was hoarding the only copy of the textbook, but she had stopped paying attention to the details. She was tired, and she needed to get on with her revision. If he happened to be here to be productive alongside her, she didn't mind the company. It was getting awfully quiet in the library.

She could even tell her mother tomorrow that she had had a successful interaction with a man, and she could bask in the glory of her vague definition of the words 'successful' and 'interaction', while her mother squealed into the receiver like a middle school girl who had just brushed hands with her crush in the school cafeteria.

He pulled out a chair across her and sat down. She tried to recall his name. He smiled back at her, she smiled back, and she lowered her head once again to look at her textbook. She paused, pretending to read. It was bothering her that she didn't know his name. How could she not?

 _Jason? Jack? Jeff?_

She was sure his name began with J, because she had seen the big letters J.P. embroidered on the side of his messenger bag about a hundred times. It was sitting in the chair right now, next to him. Unless J.P. stood for something else entirely, but she doubted it. He seemed like the kind of guy to have his initials on his stuff.

 _John?_

"So what are you doing here so late at night?" she asked without looking at him. "I mean, what brings you here? If you don't mind me asking," she added.

 _James?_

"Not at all. Well, my roommate went clubbing and brought his girlfriend over afterwards," he said. "You know what happens when you put two hormonal early-twenty-somethings in one room."

She chuckled softly and turned the page of the textbook. He observed her as she did so.

 _Justin?_

"Sloppy," he carried on, answering his rhetorical question. "I had to leave. At first I was just walking around aimlessly, looking for a bench to sleep on. And then it started to pour so I ducked in here."

Amy looked up at him with an expression he couldn't quite figure out, and he wondered if he had said anything wrong.

 _Jake_ , she thought. _That was it. His name was Jake. Or was it?_

"Sorry if this makes me sound like a horrible person," she blurted. "But your name is Jake, right?"

"Yeah," he said, taken by surprise. "Jake Peralta. I'm… I'm in your Biology class? We paired up for a lab once."

"Oh, I know," she said. "I remember that. I just… I'm sorry, I- we've never really, properly talked, that's all."

He nodded. She was right. They had never had a real conversation, despite almost always being a few feet from each other. He had admired her from afar for the larger part of the year, ever since he noticed her during the Halloween party last fall.

She had dressed as a Christmas tree – bit weird of a costume choice in late October – decked from head to toe in tinsels and fairy lights. He had not meant to eavesdrop, but they were only standing a few feet away and she was already tipsy, at 10 o'clock, speaking loudly to the girl standing next to her. She never noticed him chuckling to himself whenever she told a joke or made a sarcastic remark, but he thought she was delightful. She vanished into the crowd later on, and when he tried to look for her again, he discovered that she had already gone home.

He practically beamed when he walked into class after the New Year to find that the very same girl he had pined over for over two weeks had been sitting in front of him for the past four months. Now he had a name to the face, and this was not just any face. A face he was pretty sure he loved, or would grow to love. He didn't know why he had never noticed her before, but now that he had, he couldn't help but decide that maybe it was fate. She could have enrolled in Forensics, or Psychology, or Anthropology, or any other course on the Natural Sciences spectrum, but here she was, smack in the seat in front of him, her ponytail pulled back with a red rubber band. _Fate_.

Over time, he started to notice what she did on her laptop in class. She always had her screen turned on too bright, and, sitting behind her, he could always see whatever she was doing – which just so happened to be making edits of animals wearing human clothes while the lecturer droned on and on about the quaternary structure of a protein. His favourite was the beagle in a suit-and-tie, and he liked how she was so hilariously bad at Photoshop. He was going to talk to her about it, maybe strike up a conversation about that sometime, but she always left the room before he could work up the nerve.

So he let a whole semester pass by, and he couldn't believe his luck just when the year was coming to an end, when he found the two of them in lab coats as assigned partners, peering at the microscope they shared. He thought she would never notice him.

"This is pretty neat, huh?" She had said, in an attempt to fill the awkward silence that had fostered between them.

"Yeah," he said dumbly.

He had a lot on his mind, but somehow, he could never get a single word out, so he wasn't much help that morning. He just nodded like an idiot the entire time she struggled to keep the conversation alive. She was kind and warm towards him, but she stopped trying to kick off a chat when he kept giving her short, blunt responses. She decided that maybe he just wasn't interested in her, and not just in a romantic way, but in a way that indicated he probably didn't want to have anything to do with her, at all. Which was fine by her. He was just a boy, and she just needed to get an A on the assignment.

When they had to fill out individual lab reports to turn in for submission afterwards, Jake knew he was screwed. He had completely zoned out the entire hour and a half, just from looking at her and being absorbed into it, and he had no clue what the slides they were supposed to look at were about. He knew he was going to fail the semester once again, but he knew that at this cost, it seemed reasonable.

He liked her presence. She was funny and smart. Cranky sometimes, he observed, when she didn't get enough sleep, and keeping his eyes glued to her badly edited photos had made him embarrass himself over and over again when the lecturer called him out to respond to questions he never had the answers to. But he liked her presence.

"So have you studied?"

Jake snapped out of his daydream and looked at her. She peered at him sincerely.

"For your finals, I mean. They're a big deal, and so heavily content based. You can't just wing them."

"Yeah, I have," he lied. "I, uh, got a head start a week ago, and I went over the stuff. The... concepts _._ "

"Cool," she responded, keeping her head down again. "That's smart of you. I still have two chapters left. Normally I would've done what you did, but I guess I just wasn't as interested in Biology as I thought I would be. It's kind of hard to make yourself work when you're not enjoying the work. And _this_ ," she gestured at her book, "is a weird situation, because I normally also very much enjoy work."

He smiled, and she tried not to cringe at the fact that it had barely been ten minutes into the conversation and she had already shared her life story with him. When he didn't reply within five seconds, she counted to another ten, knowing that any moment now, he would get up and leave. Tell her 'good talk', take his things and go. That was usually how it worked with the people she met. They would become friends, only for her to be deserted soon afterwards when her 'friends' had come to realise that perhaps she was too Type A for them after all, and that they didn't need an extra parent to coach them on morality and punctuality.

Jake's mind was churning. He wanted to say something; he didn't want to make the same mistake as he did during the lab, and he didn't want them to fall into an awkward hum while he watched her work. All along, he had missed so many opportunities, and he was not about to miss this one, too. He knew he had to pluck up his courage to start an actual conversation this time.

He cleared his throat.

"So why are you in my class? I didn't mean for this to be rude, but you look too young to be here."

"Oh, I skipped fourth grade, and then I graduated high school a year early because I got a perfect GPA for three years and they let me do that." Amy paused, and flushed. _Cool it with the life story thing,_ she scolded herself sternly. _Besides, you don't want him to think you're a snob who is trying too hard to show off._ She changed the subject before whatever she had just said had a chance to sink in, steering the conversation to him.

"So you're just going to sit here?" she asked. "And rub it in my face that you've got this class sorted and I'm still here, at 3:30, cramming useless facts about the cohesion-tension theory only to forget every last thing about it the second I walk out of the hall tomorrow?"

"Oh, I could go-"

"No," she said quickly, stopping him from getting up, and she looked at him. "Please don't go. I was kidding," she mumbled, resenting herself for not being able to pull a convincing joke. She finally had someone to talk to - someone cool and relaxed, a total Type B - and he was actually interested in her enough to stay and chat. She didn't want him to go at all. He seemed to have read her mind then, because he smiled. He didn't want himself to go either.

"Come on, you can do this," he said lamely, not knowing what else to say.

"I hope I can," she said, trying to stifle a yawn. "I feel like I'm about to die. Or worse, fall asleep, and not manage to finish studying, so I get a mediocre 70%."

"Or you could take a break," he filled in. "I mean, you look like you've been sitting here since 10 o' clock."

"9," she corrected him. "Well, maybe 9:30. I swear I spent at least half an hour circling the place, looking for this book."

"Then you should _definitely_ be taking a break," he said. "Saying this not only because I am a big fan of breaks, but also because if you don't, you'll exhaust yourself to death." He paused, in deep thought. "Hey, we should get pancakes at this diner on campus – they've got seriously awesome maple syrup. Bet you've never been there, and bet you never want to leave after you walk in."

"It's nearly 4 in the morning, Jake," she said, writing frantically on her notepad as she kept her eyes glued to the textbook. He had to stop himself from smiling; he liked the way she said his name. "Nobody's awake at this time except for you and I. We could drop by tomorrow afternoon if it really is as great as you're making it sound."

"It is," he reassured her. "God. My mouth is watering, just from thinking about those pancakes. No joke, they're the best in town," he said. "And what I'm about to say may surprise you, but," he paused for effect. "It's actually a 24 hour diner."

That seemed to have caught her attention. She looked up from her book, inquisitive. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

She weighed her options, and raised an eyebrow. "Why should I go to a diner that I don't even know for sure exists, at 4 in the morning, with a stranger?" she asked him, twirling her pen in her hand. "How do I know this is not an elaborate scheme to get me murdered and have my body thrown in a gutter?"

"First of all, I'm not a stranger; I sit behind you in Biology, remember? And secondly, if I were a murderer," Jake reasoned with her, half a smile playing on his lips. "I would've been a considerate one and killed you off _ages_ ago so you wouldn't have had to sit through hours of revision when you're never going to take the final anyway. Murderers have common courtesy too, you know."

"Consider me convinced", she said. She smiled and capped her pen. She grabbed her highlighter, gathered her notes into a folder and threw them into her bag. "So where's this diner that you so highly recommend? It'd better be good, or you've got hell to pay for distracting me from my revision."

* * *

"This is _very_ good," Amy mumbled, chewing on pancake as she held up the bottle of maple syrup, studying the sticker on the plastic. "Oh, it's from our neighbour; Canada." She swallowed her bite and began cutting another piece.

"Right?" Jake responded, mouthful of maple syrup.

"Yeah," she said, and looked up at him. She burst into laughter. "Don't pour it directly into your mouth – you'll get diabetes."

"Like you would know," he said, continuing to spoon syrup into his mouth.

She dropped her knife and pointed at her Biology textbook that she had kidnapped from the library. It was the first time that she had broken a rule deliberately, and she quite liked the way it felt. The book was resting on the top of her bag peacefully. She had planned to power through the final chapter while they were waiting for their food to arrive, but with it being this early in the morning, they were the only customers present, and the pancakes came before she had a chance to finish reading three pages.

"Uh, Biology student right here," she gestured, and he rolled his eyes. "I know diabetes."

"Then explain it," he said, and she hesitated.

"What are you, my professor?" she asked, and refused to offer an explanation. The truth was, she didn't know what it was, really, in detail. She knew that broadly, it had two types, with the first type being about… _okay_. Fine. So she didn't have a clue. But maybe, just maybe, her final would not be on biological diseases. She wasn't religious, but she mumbled a quick prayer, addressed to anyone up above who might be listening.

"So are you done studying now?" Jake asked, trying to find something to talk about.

"No, God, no," Amy responded, her eyes widening as she was reminded of how close her final was again. " _Shit_." She reached over to fetch her book, but he stopped her.

"It's okay," he said, "it's just a final. You've been working hard consistently this year, haven't you?"

She nodded, unsure as to where he was going with that.

"Good for you. That means you won't even have to try that hard tomorrow to get a good overall grade."

"Do _you_?" she asked, and he looked at her. He gave her a look and laughed.

"Hell yeah I do," he said. "I've been slacking off the entire year. I have so much to catch up on. But at this point, I'm kind of done. Physically, mentally, emotionally... whatever. Just, in all ways, you know. And that thing about me studying was… not true," he confessed. "I mean, I did flick through the book several times when I bothered to, but that was well over a week ago. Right now I'm just too exhausted to deal with Biology anymore."

"But it's your _final_!" She couldn't help but be concerned.

"I know, I know," he said, "but it's difficult. I could never focus in class. I go to bed late the night before, knowing it's a bad idea, and then morning comes and I don't want to wake up…"

"…and you walk in late," she finished his sentence, and he nodded.

"And then I spend the rest of the hour looking at you Photoshopping a beagle in a suit-and-tie, and-"

"Wait, you _saw_ those?" she asked. She looked alarmed, and he gave a soft chuckle to let her know that it wasn't a big deal. Because it wasn't. _It was cute._ But he didn't say that.

"You were sitting in front of me, and you know I have no real interest in Biology. I'm making an assumption here, but you're just doing it for the credits, and have no real deep and passionate connection to the subject itself, right?"

She nodded.

"Yeah. It's the same for me. So I was always too bored, and you always have your screen on so bright…" he tried to explain. Though she lowered her head bashfully, he could see that she was starting to smile. "I mean, it's not a bad thing. I liked the one with the bulldog with the pearl necklace. You're just… like, _so bad_ at it that it's…"

He stopped himself and mentally browsed for a word that wasn't 'cute'. He didn't want to freak her out. _Adorable? That was worse. Delightful? Okay, slow it down, Shakespeare. This is not a sonnet. Just say the word 'cute', won't you? No, I won't, because it's weird, and it's not cute to call someone 'cute' within an hour of speaking to them. Especially when it's so darn obvious that you have a massive, sloppy crush on them. That's not how it works, that's not…_

"…cute," he said, and he kicked himself internally. So much for his internal monologue.

"The bulldog too?" she interrupted again, appalled. She had stopped smiling, and he wondered if he had just caught himself in an argument that was about to take place.

Maybe he should not have called her cute.

"Well," he started to speak, but she stopped him by meeting his eye directly. Her face crumpled and she buried her face in her hands.

"I'm so embarrassed right now," she mumbled, and he laughed. She looked up and gave him a weak smile. "Please don't judge me. Oh God. You must've thought I was a weird nerd-loser hybrid the entire time… which would be _accurate_ , and would also explain why you didn't want to talk to me."

 _Huh?_ he thought.

"You thought I didn't want to talk to you?" he asked, frowning.

"Well, you definitely didn't when we paired up for the lab…" she said meekly.

"No," he said. "No. I did. I was… I just… I had a lot on my mind then, so I wasn't… responsive. But I definitely did want to talk to you."

She peered at him cautiously. "Are you mocking me?"

" _No_ ," he said. "Not at all."

"Whatever. You're funny," she announced, as if she were making an observation. "It kind of blows that we've only just started talking."

"Yeah," he agreed, and then he drifted into thought. It did kind of blow. Not just kind of. Just… this _sucked_. He should have started talking to her on the very first day after their end-of-year holidays. He just wasn't sure if she would like talking to him. But now that he could tell they got along just fine, he felt like hitting himself on the head with a frying pan.

The two of them sat in the booth, talking like old friends as the night darted by. It was getting so late that it was starting to get early. At one point, Amy burst into tears from laughter from listening to Jake's rendition of a mash-up of his favourite ABBA songs. She ended up knocking over his glass of iced tea, and they had to ask the waitress for some tissues to mop up the mess, all the while still laughing.

"Oh, God," she said as she wiped off a tear from below her eye with the back of her hand. "It's half past 4. The sun is about to rise, and I've been up for so long that I feel like I'm about to pass out."

The waitress came over, balancing their plates and utensils on one hand, the other wiping down the table efficiently. She walked away and Amy put her elbows on the glass surface, propping her head up with her arms.

"Well, that was delicious," she declared lazily as he paid and tipped the waitress. "Thanks. I owe you one." She closed her eyes as the first sun rays seeped into the diner, the light piercing the darkness - a small, humble, rosy glow. "Great. It's morning." She opened her eyes and glanced at her bag, before tucking the book below her arm and slinging the strap of her cross-body over her shoulder.

"You should probably go back to your dorm and take a power nap," Jake said. "You know, just so you won't collapse in the middle of this two hour exam."

She nodded as they got up. "I should."

"I'll walk you back," he suggested, and then worried that he might have seemed a bit too eager. "I mean, it's the early hours. The sun has just started to rise but it's still pretty dark out. You don't want to be walking on your own. I don't want anyone to actually abduct and murder you," he added.

"What's with you and murders?" she asked, a funny smile on her face, and he shrugged. He didn't know.

They walked the few blocks in silence, the blackness of the night slowly rubbing off. It was starting to get warm, and when they arrived at her dormitory, they stood there on the front steps awkwardly, not knowing what to do or say next.

Amy spoke up.

"Thanks for… tonight. This early morning. Whatever… _this_ is," she gestured at the sky with one hand, clutching the book in the other. "It was fun, and… my mum was right. I needed a break from studying. Thanks."

"It's okay. It was fun for me too. I really liked it. I really liked talking to you," he said. "So… we still on for tomorrow afternoon?" he asked shyly. He knew he was overreaching, but now that they had talked, he felt that he might as well take this risk. What was the worst that could happen? She could turn him down, and he could feel sour for a while, but then he would be okay again. Though he had a feeling she would say yes...

"No," she said, and he felt his heart sink. She paused. "But I can do tomorrow _evening_. I just need to go back and charge up by taking a nap. You think you can do tomorrow evening?" she asked hopefully.

He beamed. "Yeah. I think so. I'll have to check with my secretary, and my PA, _and_ my agent, because, you know, I'm _so_ busy…"

They laughed.

"Oh yeah," she said. "Me too. _So_ busy. I'm… yeah. Busy. All of this stuff going on…" she trailed off.

"Never hurts to triple check my calendar," he said. "I'll just, um…"

"You know where to find me," she said, looking at the front door.

"Yeah," he responded. "Yeah, I do."

They stood outside for a moment longer, lingering, not knowing how to say goodbye. A hug seemed a bit too much, but not doing anything seemed like it was not enough. So they settled for an awkward handshake and a grin, like they had just sealed a deal, and he watched her key in the code to the building. She shoved one of the big double doors open and stood next to it, looking at him.

"It's, uh..." she said. "It's a date," she said quickly and smiled, slipping inside before he had time to respond. He stood there, surprised in the best possible way, his eyes never leaving her back until she had vanished down the hall, until the front door locked shut with a loud bang.

Then Jake started to make his way back. He hoped his roommate would have evacuated, or at least, that the room would not smell as if someone just had hot, sweaty sex the entire time he was gone. He was pretty sure it would. He turned the corner and looked up at the sky. He discovered that night had fled, the sun now feverishly clawing its way upwards, but he didn't care; a new day was here.


End file.
